Author2Author: Tennessee Jones & Charlie Anders, pt. 2

The conversation between the two core members of the Cross Gender Caravan continues, as we learn about what makes Charlie Anders's debut novel tick...

Tennessee Jones: Choir Boy ends with Berry, your protagonist, experiencing a transcendent moment while he is singing in the choir. The preservation of his voice and his love for singing are the things that create the erratic and often painful, sometimes hilarious trajectory he follows. He seems willing to go through anything as long as he can keep singing. Your novel goes a long way towards uniting humor and sarcasm with transcendent, almost religious, experience and meaning. Was this a conscious decision, or something that came naturally from the work as it progressed?

Charlie Anders: Humor is like texture to me. I can't really believe in a fictional world unless it's full of ridiculous stuff. The "real" world is so absurd that I feel as though absurdism is the only true realism.

Writing Choir Boy, I guess I was very conscious of the need to create a context where the reader could understand Berry's actions. Berry's everyday surroundings are kind of bleak and bizarre, and his experience as a choirboy is beautiful and transformative. These are the two poles in his life, and he's strongly drawn towards the beauty and wonder of being a choirboy. So my natural tendency to portray the "real" world as silly and sometimes horrifying fed into Berry's desire to be something different. In particular, Berry feels strongly alienated from all the adult males in his world, except his choir conductor, so it made sense to portray all the men in a humorous way.

Also, that really was my experience as a choirboy: all the choirboys were sarcastic and profane as fuck. And then we would turn around and channel this awesome beauty and power that at times really did feel spiritual.